Final Beat of the Drum, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also by Sally Spencer from Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Goodbye-Ee
Part Two: The Drowning Woman
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part Three: A Happy Ending
Author’s Note
Also by Sally Spencer from Severn House
The Jennie Redhead mysteries
THE SHIVERING TURN
DRY BONES
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS
The Monika Paniatowski mysteries
ECHOES OF THE DEAD
BACKLASH
LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER
A WALK WITH THE DEAD
DEATH’S DARK SHADOW
SUPPING WITH THE DEVIL
BEST SERVED COLD
THICKER THAN WATER
DEATH IN DISGUISE
THE HIDDEN
DEAD END
POISON
THE FINAL BEAT OF THE DRUM
The Inspector Woodend mysteries
DANGEROUS GAMES
DEATH WATCH
A DYING FALL
FATAL QUEST
The Inspector Sam Blackstone series
BLACKSTONE AND THE NEW WORLD
BLACKSTONE AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
BLACKSTONE AND THE GREAT WAR
BLACKSTONE AND THE ENDGAME
Novels
THE COMPANY
THE FINAL BEAT OF THE DRUM
Paniatowski’s Last Case
Sally Spencer
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First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2022 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Alan Rustage, 2023
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5064-5 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0707-4 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0706-7 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
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PART ONE
Goodbye-Ee
Goodby-ee! Goodbye-ee
Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee
World War One song
Wednesday, 3 July, 1985
In the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, Monika Paniatowski glanced around the table at the two men and one woman who were no longer her team.
Directly opposite her sat Inspector Colin Beresford, who, even in middle age, was a formidable melding of muscle and bone. He had been at Paniatowski’s side for what, to both of them, seemed like forever, but actually only dated back to the time that she had been a detective sergeant and he a detective constable. Louisa (Paniatowski’s adopted daughter) called him Uncle Colin. At Whitebridge police headquarters, however, he had a nickname which was much less avuncular and referred to the more-than-active sex life he led after he’d lost his virginity at the comparatively late age of thirty-one. The name clung to him (like wet swimming trunks) even after he’d settled down, and would probably travel with him to his grave, so that when people who’d known him read his tombstone, they’d find their lips silently forming the missing word, ‘Shagger’.
To Beresford’s left sat DS Kate Meadows. Neat, petite and elfin-like, she gave the impression that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but those who crossed her quickly learned that she had a gaze intent enough to strip away skin.
And then there was Jack Crane.
Handsome Jack!
Dashing Jack!
One-eyed Jack!
Had Colin Beresford been caught in Jack’s situation, he would never have lost an eye. When he’d seen that the woman rushing at him had a screwdriver in her hand, he’d have dropped her immediately. But gentle Jack – gallant Jack – had hesitated before hitting the woman, and that hesitation had cost him not just his eye, but also his career.
They’d all been her team, Paniatowski thought, and she would always be proud of them.
Even the table they were resting their elbows on was part of the team. It had been at this table that she and Charlie Woodend had worked on their first murder case together, and when she had stepped into Charlie’s shoes, she had brought her own team here. Over the years, the rest of the furniture in the bar had been changed several times, but this table – scarred by cigarette burns, stained by spilled ale – had remained. There had never been a reserved sign on it, because that hadn’t been necessary. The regular patrons – who took pride in the nerve centre of the operation being in their local – would see to it that no casual drinker invaded DCI Paniatowski’s territory.
Monika caught herself sighing. The table would not survive their departure for long, she thought, because if there were not two pints of best bitter, a still orange and a Polish vodka resting on it, it would no longer have a function.
‘Well, this feels more like a wake than a celebration,’ Colin Beresford said suddenly. ‘And why wouldn’t it? To be kicked out after all you’ve done for this force, boss – well, it’s a bloody disgrace.’
‘With respect, sir,’ said Meadows, ‘there are times when you put the average wild bull in the china shop to shame.’
‘And what exactly do you mean by that, Sergeant?’ demanded Beresford.
Paniatowski suppressed a smile. To anyone eavesdropping, she thought, this would sound like the opening shots in a bloody war, but it wasn’t like that all. It was no more and no less than the beginning of a ritual in which Meadows took the piss out of Beresford, he got annoyed, Meadows expressed surprise that he was annoyed by what had been intended to be a wholly innocent remark, and Beresford pretended to accept her explanation. It had been going on for years, and anyone who reached the conclusion they didn’t like each other would be way off the mark.
‘You make it sound like the boss was sacked,’ Meadows explained. ‘She wasn’t. When the Central Lancs force was amalgamated with the East Lancs, there were suddenly too many chiefs and not enough Indians. So somebody had to go, didn’t they?’
‘I suppose so,’ Beresford conceded.
‘And it was decided the officers to go would be those who had put more than their thirty years in,’ Meadows concluded.
‘And I was one of those ancient lumbering beasts, so I was culled,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And, to be fair, they did promote me to superintendent for the last six months, so I’d have a bigger pension.’
‘If anybody had to go, it should have been done on the basis of results, rather than years served,’ Beresford said.
‘In that case, and taking into account my brilliant record, they’d have had me working for them until I was a hundred and six,’ Paniatowski retorted, doing her best to lighten the tone of the conversation. ‘Besides, it was about time us old ones moved over, and gave the young ones coming up a chance to prove themselves.’
Crane and Meadows openly grinned, and even the outraged Beresford felt the corners of his mouth twitch with amusement.
Paniatowski caught their expressions. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she said exasperatedly. ‘Whenever I talk about younger officers do I have to be thinking about my daughter?’
‘No, but you usually are,’ Crane said. ‘How’s she doing, boss?’
‘She’s doing fine,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘She’s on a one-year post-graduate course in the States at the moment.’ She paused. ‘Another ten years and she’ll be a chief con. Just you see if she isn’t.’
Why do I always sound like a mother hen when I’m talking about Louisa? she wondered.
She supposed the reason lay in the fact that she was a mother hen. And not just to her daughter, but to these people, too.
‘Where do you two see yourselves going in this new super-force of ours,’ she said to Beresford and Meadows. ‘Tell me now – before my influence quite fades away – and I’ll drop a few words in the right ears.’
Both the inspector and the sergeant looked mildly embarrassed at the suggestion.
‘As a matter of fact, I was thinking of putting my papers in myself,’ Beresford said.
‘Me, too,’ Meadows added.
‘This isn’t anything to do with me leaving?’ Paniatowski asked, tremulously.
‘Yes, absolutely it is,’ Meadows said. ‘Without you to hold our hands, we’d be completely lost.’ She grinned again. ‘Of course that’s not the reason, is it, Colin?’
‘No,’ Beresford agreed. ‘Lynn’s started to complain about the hours I work, and I can’t blame her for that, because I know I’m spending nothing like enough time with the kids.’
‘And I want a job in which I can protect people,’ Meadows said.
‘But you’ve already got a job like that,’ Paniatowski protested. ‘It’s called, being a police officer.’
Meadows shook her head. ‘The people we’re usually involved with are beyond help, because they’re already bloody well dead,’ Meadows countered. ‘I want to get into the process at an earlier point. I don’t want to avenge the victims – I want to stop them becoming victims in the first place.’
‘And what particular job will give you that?’ Paniatowski wondered.
Meadows smiled again.
‘I quite fancy the idea of being God,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure if they accept women for that job.’
It wasn’t her best line ever, but when the others dutifully laughed it was clear that it had done what it had intended to, which was to turn down the increasing tension by a notch or two.
They fell into talking about their old investigations – their triumphs and their failures (‘Although we’ve had damn few failures,’ Beresford pointed out), then, when the lights flashed for drinking-up-time and the landlord put the towels over the pumps, they made their way to the car park, where there were four taxis idling.
‘I thought it was best to order them for all of us,’ Paniatowski said, ‘because there’s not one of us – Kate excepted – in a fit state to drive, and the police around here are well-known to be a bunch of right proper bastards.’
‘Especially the CID,’ Meadows said.
‘Oh yes, especially them,’ Paniatowski agreed.
As her taxi pulled away, Paniatowski felt a stab of sadness. She’d had no reason for assuming the team would carry on after she’d left, she thought, but she’d harboured a secret hope that like the Temptations and the Drifters, it would survive personnel changes and continue to be – at least in spirit – the team she had created. Instead, even before the seat of her office chair had had time to grow cold, it was already disintegrating.
She was sad, too, on a more personal level, to be saying goodbye to old friends. It wasn’t literally goodbye, of course. They’d see each other around, and might even meet up in a pub once in a while. But it wouldn’t be the same. Over the years they had learned to trust and respect each other – yes, and even to love each other – but it had been their work which bound them together, and once that glue was gone, they’d be like four strangers who just happened to know everything there was to know about each other.
She sighed.
Well, that was that, she told herself.
She’d filled in all the paperwork, signed along countless dotted lines, and her time as a homicide investigator was over.
She was almost right.
PART TWO
The Drowning Woman
ONE
Tuesday, 1 February, 2000
The first people to greet the arrival of the new millennium were the inhabitants of The Line Islands (part of Kiribati, population 131,232). A few hours later, the same event was heralded in the Millennium Dome in London by a distinguished company including the queen and the prime minister, who all linked arms and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. And between and beyond these two points, there were widespread celebrations including firework displays and street parties.
Then dawn came, and it was all over. We were all in the twenty-first century now, and there was nothing to do but learn to get on with it.
Whilst the rest of the month paled in comparison to its beginnings, it was not without some interest. On the sixth of January, Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts were the film stars voted the People’s Choices, and Calista Flockhart won the television award. On the thirteenth, Bill Gates stepped down as Chief Executive of Microsoft. On the thirtieth, the St Louis Rams won the Super Bowl, and on the thirty-first, Dr Harold Shipman, Britain’s most prolific serial killer, was given a life sentence for the murder of fifteen of his patients (though he may have killed as many as 215).
There were other events which were not considered important enough to merit international coverage, but were nevertheless of great local interest in Lancashire. On the eighteenth, a man was drowned in the Irish Sea off Blackpool, having gone into the water to rescue his dog, which appeared to be having difficulties (the dog, too, drowned). A ten-year-old maths protégée from Preston was informed by Oxford that the university would look forward to seeing her at the start of the Michaelmas Term.
And on the first of February (the month itself being notable as the first of the century to contain twenty-nine days), a well-known businessman in Whitebridge would come to what could only be called a bizarre end.
Overcroft House was a substantial detached dwelling dating back to the early twentieth century. It was located in that area of Whitebridge which had once been the province of doctors, solicitors and higher-ranking local government officials. Now, virtually all the detached houses had been broken up into flats, which were rented by doctor’s nurses, solicitors’ clerks and town hall bureaucrats.
Overcroft House had not escaped this process, but its conversion had been carried out along philanthropic, rather than commercial lines, and though it admitted to no such thing on the board outside, it was a shelter for battered wives and their dependent children.
The house had six large bedsits for its ‘clients’, a communal kitchen and living space, an examination room, and a warden’s flat and office. There was a garden around the back, with swings and a sandpit for the children. A doctor made regular visits, a psychiatrist called by appointment only. There were two part-time cleaners, though guests were, as much as possible, encouraged to keep their own area clean. There were also wardens, one of them part-time. The full-time warden was Kate Meadows, and she was the only person to have her name on the board outside.
When civic dignitaries and potential donors cornered Meadows at fundraisers and congratulated her on running such a stressful operation with apparent equanimity, she usually pasted a modest smile on top of the fixed look of amiability she had been wearing since the function began, and said that most people could probably manage to find the strength to do what positively had to be done.
Only occasionally, when someone like Councilwoman Mrs Blossom went just too far, did she feel the carefully-applied mask begin to crack a little. The councilwoman, who had been wearing an over-elaborate hat which defied the laws of both taste and gravity, had laid a podgy hand on Meadows’ shoulder, and told her – every word larded with patronising self-importance – that she thought dear Kate was such a ‘brave little thing to take on so much responsibility’. And Meadows had felt a strong urge to reply that this was nothing, and that she had once been mistress of a house designed by John Vanbrugh – that’s right, Mrs Blossom, the John Vanbrugh, architect and playwright, 1644–1726 – which had had grounds so extensive that they required the full-time attention of six gardeners. She didn’t do it, of course, because she knew that revealing an aristocratic background would be just as damaging to her career in Overcroft House as revealing a criminal one would be.
